The Pack
by FantasyCafe
Summary: After the last episode 'Thanks.' When Merton comes back (for what we all know is Tommy) and they start college together. My own take on a part of their happily ever after, going off the basis of a couple continuing college episodes.


_~Sometimes life has a funny way of planning things out for yeah. I'm not talking that winning basket-ball game or your next free spirit call from the fortune teller lady, I mean actual life altering events. Fate is what my best buddy Merton calls it. Like a werewolf biting you right before senior year or meeting someone you never thought you'd have to see again. It's funny like that, but that's what the life of Tommy Dawkins entails. It always has. Almost nothing about life is news to me anymore…...~_

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" Hey Mert, you uh…you notice the dorm advisor kinda has an intense baby face going on? Mert? Merton!"

Merton startled, his body twitching as he turned from his "Bat from Hell" DVD to peek over at Tommy and glare as his popcorn fell in the midst of his jump.

"Nice going Tommy, that was the last of the popcorn too…"

Tommy huffed, moving to sit on the couch and began to help himself to couch popcorn, ignoring Merton's grossed out facial expression.

"Did you say baby face?" Merton perked, throwing his blankets off and jumping to his computer, which they had recently set up next to the dorm window, and began to type furiously.

"Yeah." Tommy walked over, munching a handful of popcorn with his brow furrowed. "He said his name was Conrad Punttington, dorky name by the way, but not just that, I'm talking baby face so intense, I got the heebie jeebies thinking some chick had accidentally brought their kid over from the next door daycare. Like he looks like an actual baby doll head on an adult body."

Merton brought up a website page and tapped again speedily.

"The…Renins guide to…body dysmorphia?"

"The Renins, Tommy, were an old occult group built in the 1700's of Rome who began to bring up the idea of worshiping the Roman gods again after years of faith dying out. One of those gods brought back was Eros" Merton grinned, but seeing Tommy's confused face rolled his eyes and pointed to the open computer page.

"Eros is the Roman term for the Greek god Cupid, Tommy. The god of love. The brand of hallmark and Valentine's Day and, and, and you're not listening" Merton dropped his hands finishing as Tommy moved over to the window.

He paused his tongue lashing only because Tommy's regular human ears were perked and Tommy was pasted to the window. His hands were taped to the glass, nails growing and shrinking every few seconds.

"Something wrong big guy?" Merton murmured, so as not to scare him as he moved closer to see, "what do you see Tommy?

Tommy's breathed fogged the frosty glass, his eyes darting across the window. "Wolves." Merton stopped and looked up sharply at his best friend. His face slightly paler than the Dingle trademark look usually branded. "I can hear them. Smell them."

"How close are they?" Merton pressed himself in front of Tommy and peered out the window, as Tommy's eyes flashed their signature yellow.

"Close." Tommy turned and made for the door, but Merton darted before him and shoved his hands to Tommy's chest.

"Whoa there big guy" Merton pressed on, avoiding the angry growl let loose, "I get you wanna wolf out and go run with wolves and frolic and howl and all the good werewolf stuff, but first, you don't know this pack. It could be Mr.D all over again, in fact they could be from the Lycanthropes Aromada Distella, a large pack that moves together and eats local livestock, and when there's no livestock they move onto human flesh! They're not known to take lightly to outsiders Tommy, they could snap your neck or worse….eat you!"

"Merton…." Tommy murmured, his eyes were still yellow, eerie with power, but no real struggle as the wolf would never hurt Merton. Tommy was assured it was because the wolf saw Merton as pack, but something told him it was deeper than that. He placed his hands on Merton's arms, his nails gripping fast, letting Merton whine before he eased his grasp. "Listen to me buddy, I gotta go outside and find 'em. I gotta. I'll be back, I'm just gonna…..run."

Tommy took off before Merton could prevent him again, his wolf speed making some stray desk papers float to the ground. Merton bent to grasp them and frowned as he stared after Tommy, his shoulders sagging. "Yeah….just be careful."

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"Luke you know this isn't the right way, why did you think not consulting the map was a good idea?"

"Janey, I swear I know where we're going" Luke paused as he whipped out the map from his backpack, "seeeeeee, here, right here, I took the left on main, and now we're in…"

"Pleasantville. Luke. We're in Pleasantville. Not just any part mind you, but right where apparently the community college is sitting."

"Not a lot of forest ground huh?"

Janey rubbed at her temples as she grabbed the map and smacked Luke across the back of the head with it, ignoring his pained yelp.

"Not just that, wolf for brains, college kids on a campus, with barely any adult supervision, drinking, partying, ignorant of any and all supernatural life."

Luke blinked.

"….Luke, if a werewolf alpha is in the area, this is the hot spot for it. I mean forget the Colorado springs, we're a hundred percent off from those, but damn if we're gonna pass up the chance to see another teenage werewolf!"

"….huh?"

Janey smacked her hand to her forehead in frustration. "If you had done any prior research before our trip at all, ever, you would have known about the Pleasantville werewolf."

"A werewolf, here?! In this small town?"

"Not just any werewolf, the Pleasantville werewolf. An Alpha. A _leader_. Can you fathom it?! A pack leader, around our age range, living in a small town where he's the only one and only a handful mob villagers have gone after him. This is the perfect place to have pack, but also to start a family."

Janey smiled flirtatiously and pressed up against Luke as he scratched his head. "You sure this guy's an Alpha? I ain't heard about this guy at all."

"That's cause you don't pay attention to any world related news ever" Janey rolled her eyes. Opening the map, she ran her finger over the terrain and smiled. "We're only a bit off from campus. Let's head back to that campsite we found before, we'll do better tracking in the morning."

Luke agreed, grabbing his mate's backpack and slinging it over his shoulder as they took off, leaving nothing but some leaves and twigs in their path.

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Tommy skidded to a halt as he surveyed the forest floor.

Leaning down his senses picked up the faint smell of the other wolves, their footprints lodged in the mud, leaving the impression they had only just skidded away.

Getting back up, Tommy peered around for any weird noises or anyone watching him, but it was clear that the wolves that had been here were now long gone. So much so it would be impossible to track them.

A sense of sadness washed over Tommy, and for the moment, he let the wolf whine and paw and mourn the meeting, before he turned and sped off back to the dorm, the thought of Merton alone and scared and in the same building as a baby faced weirdo enough to clear his fogged up mind.

He would go tracking again tomorrow, maybe this time he would take Merton, just in case.

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"Merton? Buddy, you awake?"

Tommy creaked the door open, trying to step as softly as possible, supernatural dorm advisor or not, Mr. Punttington was still (for a little while anyway) the resident dorm advisor, and apparently the hall police. If you were caught after hours sneaking in, you could get in big trouble. Tommy had just barely started his first term, best not stir the pot just yet. It also didn't help that Merton was especially cranky when woken up during the night, vampires in the attic or not.

Tommy had learned the one the hard way.

He creeped into the kitchen and devoured the remaining chicken salad sandwiches Merton had whipped up for him, licking his fingers as he moved to the bathroom.

After calming down enough that his senses weren't going haywire, Tommy splashed his face with water, and brushed his teeth, rubbing at his eyes tiredly as he stepped back into the small living space only to stop dead in his tracks.

A large scent had encased the room that Tommy hadn't smelled before.

When he had first entered and set up in the small college dorm room, the smell of jock accessories and his favorite cologne had engulfed the room entirely, much of his stuff held his scent and the smell of his family, to the point Tommy dared not wash some things, for memories sake.

When he was still in his fight or flight mode with the recent wolf scents, he had been too distracted to notice it, but now that he had calmed down a bit, his nose had picked up the familiar scent of Merton, stowed away in the room and all over his things.

Lemongrass, dust, and some of those incense sticks Merton fired up for séances, warding off evil, and his occasional bubble bath, had taken up the majority scent of the living quarters.

Tommy breathed in deeply, sighing as his shoulders relaxed and his whole body unwound. It was strange, even when Merton wasn't giving him little short picturesque scene or quaint calming stories, he had a way of calming Tommy (and the wolf inside of him) to a whole nother degree.

It was amazing, that his best friend since high school (though they had had lockers next to each other since Kindergarten) had followed him out all the way to college. Of course Merton had said it was mostly because Flugglehoff had cut him from all the best classes, but Tommy was sure there was a little pining and love in there too.

Chuckling to himself, he passed by Merton's door, muttering a soft "night buddy" as he carried off some leftover jerky to his bedroom, unaware of the goings on, on the other side of his best friend's door, and without picking up the desperate, needy, high-pitched whine of his name being called.

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"You know I like math as much as the next geek, but none teaches it as boringly as Professor Smith does. I mean I very well fell asleep at the recall of division, not totally but almost!"

"Yeah Merton, I hear yeah" Tommy gazed after a female coed in a short pink shirt as she flounced by, her ponytail swishing. The lunch period had just started, and Tommy was famished. Luckily enough, though Merton had re-admission later than the usual, the school couldn't deny the grade point average the goth boy carried, as it perked up the total score of the whole college, and they had agreed to a similar schedule change to match Tommy's, with lunch meeting up, and only math and English separating the two from each other.

This meant Merton had plenty of time and effort to whip up some more of his amazing chicken salad sandwiches. The guy was a pretty good chef, who knew?

"So what happened when you went out last night? Did you meet the wolves? Unfortunately I was asleep by the time you came back" Merton looked awkwardly to the left, placing his gaze on the schools (oddly enough) cupid shaped water fountain, spewing water from a hole in its mouth.

"It was the weirdest thing" Tommy murmured, eyes glazing at the thought as he reminisced the scents and sounds of tracking and almost meeting with the similar creatures.

"What do you mean" Merton looked over at him inquisitively, taking in Tommy's face.

Tommy huffed, "just as I happened upon them, they ran off. I guess you were right. They could have been evil…..and when I started coming after them, they took off…"

Tommy looked off wistfully.

At the saddened look Merton bit his lip and placed his hand on Tommy's arm comfortingly, making his best friend look over at him, "or I could be dead wrong. They were probably shy and didn't know how to approach you Alpha boy."

Tommy chuckled weakly, his shoulders sagging again, as they reached the picnic table they had shared lunch at on their first day as well.

"Maybe….but I don't know how to turn off the whole 'scary wolf side' even if I wanted to. They'll probably never come back either way."

"First of all Tommy, your scary wolf side doesn't affect anymore…..that much. Especially not me, not like it used to. It's certainly not what sent them running, since you never even met up, and….I'm guessing since you couldn't get to them last night, your gonna not heed my warning, and try to track them again tonight."

Tommy looked up from tearing the plastic off his sandwich and nodded. "That's the plan, but I know we both don't have class until 1pm tomorrow, so if you were feeling up to it, I was going to invite you to come too."

Merton grinned, placing a hand to his chest and falling back a bit. "You're…..inviting me? On a track? That's such an important task though Tommy! A wolf can be so vulnerable and high strung…" he paused at the glare, "what I meant to say is I'd love to, and I'm honored. I'll bring the wolfs bane and silver nitrate" he grinned at Tommy's face. If only looks could kill.

"I won't scare them off tonight. I promise. It's almost time for history. You ready to go?"

"You go ahead" Tommy stated, "I'll catch up"

Merton frowned, but stood silently, not willing to argue, "Sure buddy, see you in class."

He took off, stopping once to look at Tommy sitting at the table, head in his hands, before taking off for the school building and angrily berating himself for making Tommy feel worse than he already was.

Dingle 0, Universe 1

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Happy (Early) Valentine's Day ;)

Unfortunately some of the later chapters will not be on , but you can find it under my ao3 account (pm me if you want the link to that) due to rating changes on . For anyone unfamiliar, AO3 is pretty laidback to whatever whenever, you could pair a lollipop with a balloon and rate it above R that kind of thing. I'll put up a couple chapters here, but after say about 4 or 5 chapters I'll have to move it because the rating is gonna go up. I have watched BWOC since about when it first aired in 1999, and even though it is my absolute favourite TV show ever I have never made fanart or written fanfics about it and that's quite literally a cry in shame, so here's me finally making up for that! Please fav and review, let me know what you think, come follow me under AO3, that reminds me, if anyone else also happens to write on AO3, please let me know how to space the sentences in HTML when posting a new fic, thanks : )


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